Trust me, you’re not the only one. Having my dad have his own place where I could have at least a couple days a week of peace was one of my dearest dreams as a child.
They both passed within the last two years. I miss them but I honestly feel like I should miss them more. They both were in bad shape when they passed and I honestly believe they are in a better place and, selfishly, all the work I did for them is gone. So, it sounds horrible, but in a way it’s a win-win situation.
How do I feel about them? My father was born rich and was always trying to find a way to keep that going and failed at every turn. As I’ve gotten older, I feel more sympathy for him. Nothing he attempted worked. Needless to say he felt like a failure and worthless. He had no idea how to succeed in the real world. He didn’t want to work hard, he was a deamer and schemer.
My Mom, therefore, financially kept the family going. I didn’t know her nearly as well as my father because she worked 3rd shift at the hospital for the extra money. The downside is that I spent far more time w/ my father or simply on my own. My siblings feel like she was a strong woman for sucessfully putting all of thru college, nice house in the burbs, everything. I actually feel like she was a rather weak woman who never insisted that my father do his fair share.
I find myself with some sympathy for my father & none whatsoever for my mother. She had more power than she ever imagined yet did nothing with it.
I love my parents. They drive me crazy sometimes, but I know they’d do anything for me, and I’d do anything for them.
They’re cool.
A little too religious for my tastes, but they’re good people. I probably wouldn’t hang out with them if they weren’t my parents, but not because they’re jerks or anything. My mother is 65 years old, and doesn’t do anything that doesn’t revolve around Jesus. Nice person and all, but I don’t typically make friends with little old church ladies, sweet as they may be. My dad, while hilarious and with a life outside of God, is 89 years old. Again, cool dude, cracks me the holy hell up, but I don’t usually hang out with folks pushing 90. He’s a good chat, though, and sometimes I call him just to shoot the breeze.
Edit: If my dad were a stranger who was my age, we would totally be BFFs.
My mom is great. My father wasn’t abusive, but he’s a jerk and an idiot in my opinion. I’ve tried to avoid him as much as possible since I was a kid.
I guess they did the best they could. That being said, it wasn’t really good enough. The fighting in the house didn’t do anyone any good.
My parents are good people and I love them.
Sometimes they get on my nerves. My dad thinks too highly of his own opinions, is always trying to draw people into heated debates about any random thing that crosses his mind, and has a mean streak that he tries to control but often unsuccessfully. He is conflicted because he thinks of himself as a man of science, but he is chained to religion. He also isn’t very open-minded, even though he seems to think he is. He is known to say anti-semitic things, as well as anti-black things (even though he’s black…go figure).
My mother is also religious and doesn’t know how not to “minister” to people. She has a kind, warm personality, but sometimes she is surprisingly detached from the emotions of others. I think she is so used to my father’s penchant for loudmouth bullying that she (and him) don’t even consider the alienating effect he might have on other people. She is smart, and yet the only book she seems to read is the Bible.
But they raised me right, are generally good to me , and I know they love me.
When I was young, I thought my parents were completely awful. It’s amazing how much better they got as I grew older.
Seriously, though: I was in therapy for a couple of years so I could learn to forgive them for their shortcomings*, and I pretty much succeeded. They are both dead, now, and one thing I sort of regret is that I can’t tell them how much I appreciate how hard they tried to raise us well. They managed to find a pretty sweet middle ground between over-indulgence and Tiger Mom-ism, so that we learned to be self-reliant, to do the right thing, and to also look out for other people. They truly did their best, and truly tried hard.
*Their shortcomings, interestingly very similar in both of them, were that they were did not have easy access to a broad range of emotions; they worked hard to earn enough money for the family, and didn’t have a lot of energy left over for the more nuanced parts of life. They were, after all, both children of the great depression, and those lessons stayed with them through life.
Roddy
My mother was warm, funny and caring, but she could also be a ditz. My older sisters remember coming home from school and finding me locked out of the house because my mother would “run to the store to pick up one thing” and lose track of time.
She also had a profound hearing loss, and I can remember dozens of misunderstandings or flat-out arguments between her and my father because she had misheard something.
My father and I didn’t get close until I was an adult, and especially after my mother died. He had an explosive temper. We found out later he had a lot of undiagnosed physical problems and was probably feeling like crap most of the time.
Over the years we discovered that they had both had lousy childhoods and, in retrospect, were far better parents to us than their parents had been to them.
Neither of them should have been parents, and they did not make the best of it or do their best to raise us up right, they pretty much punted every single day for my entire childhood.
But My dad has been gone for a long time so I try to remember the few good times, and mom my will be gone soon so I’m making the best of it.
I like their company, but I have to make my visits short because they drive me nuts. They are good people but flawed. And while they may have tried their best as parents, they were not the best parents. I like them much more now as an adult than I did when I was a kid.
My father likes to argue and debate in a blowhardish way. It wouldn’t be so bad if he actually argued well, but he doesn’t. He’s often loud and wrong and seems to purposefully try to be provocative. He’s also got a mean streak. Always has had one. I remember there was a period in my teenage years when I couldn’t stand to be around him because everything he said hurt my feelings. I was scared of him as a kid because he had a temper and acted like a crazed maniac sometimes. But I know he’s not a bad person. When he’s mellow and not trying to show out, he can be fun to hang around with. Now I just wish he read more so that he could be a real intellectual instead of a make-believe buffoonish one. He’s a very smart man but he doesn’t challenge himself like he should.
My mother is an enigma to me. When I was really young I think I yearned for her attention but was always left wanting. She was just never around. And when she was around, she was tired. I remember often hugging her or climbing into her lap and hearing her groan because I was hurting her tired aching body. She was always off saving the world, which is admirable, but it came at the expense of her family. I know that sounds cruel, but it is true. I do think she sacrificed her duties as a mother in a lot of ways. There were way too many conferences and meetings and all-nighters. There were too many mornings when she was laid up in bed asleep, while her small children were downstairs making their own lunch and breakfasts and doing God knows what else. I wasn’t a sickly child, but I can’t imagine that she would have taken time off from work to attend to me if I had been. I idolized my teachers at school because I got more attention from them than I got from either of my parents. Even though they had 30-something other kids to wrangle, my teachers always seemed to know me better than my own parents did.
Now, as an adult, I have forgiven my mother for not being more engaged in my life during my development, though she still befuddles me sometimes. She is not someone I feel comfortable talking to about deep and personal stuff. We are similiar in a striking way–we both interact emotionally on a superficial level. But the difference is that while I recognize my superficiality, she doesn’t have a clue about herself. We do talk on a regular basis, though, and if I’m not feeling well, I will tell her and let her “mommy” me in her own way. What she says may drive me bonkers (there’s only so many times an agnostic can stomach “God will make a way”), but I’m at least giving her a chance to reach out to me.
I think I’ve inherited my father’s sense of humor and my mother’s sense of justice and fairness. I’m also fairly successful in my life, just like all of their children. So they must have done something right with us.
You could have spoken for me, Qadgop. I still miss mine, even though it’s only been seven years that they’ve been gone. They were taken too soon. They lived good, full lives but were not particularly elderly. Mom was only 69 and Pop had just turned 70. I’m sure both had anticipated at least 10 more years together.
Be glad you had them as long as you did. That’s what I focus on. My Mom died at age 62, my dad at age 63.
I love them. They are wonderful people who have been together over 30 years now. I have nothing bad to say about my parents.
My parents are the most wonderful and supportive people I have ever known. They sacrificed a lot to make sure my brother and I had the childhood they never had. The only way I could repay them for everything they’ve done is to be the type of parent they were (if I ever have kids).
I feel a certain amount of disdain for each. My father cheated on my mom and left when I was 2. He only tried to create a relationship when my sister and I were old enough to be “manageable,” so around college age. He was a deadbeat even though he was wealthy. He was a serial cheater until only recently and frequently dated women younger than me. Additionally, he goes through these periods of introspection where he’ll insist that he’s going to spend more time with his family and friends, but I’ve learned from hard experience that it’ll never actually happen. When I was younger, I used to research diseases that I could develop to get his attention. I had these fantasies of him visiting my death bed and apologizing for never seeing me. Cancer (ideally leukemia) was my preferred disease, but at the time, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t communicable. I like my dad, but I’m not sure that what I feel could be described as love.
My mom is a little different. I love her, but in some ways I intensely dislike her. She drinks. A lot. Everything is about her. When we were younger, she used me as her sounding board, telling me about elements of her relationship with my dad that I had no business knowing. I had to support her emotionally from the time that I was about 6. She only started in on the really heavy drinking when I graduated college, and has become more forgetful, sloppy and frustrating since. I hesitate to come to her with problems, because she turns them around to be her personal tragedies. I have to comfort her when I need comfort.
Wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
I laughed when I heard my dad had an incurable disease. He was a well-liked gregarious and popular person, but he robbed me of my innocence, he was cruel and manipulative. I still have nightmares and it pisses me off when people speak highly of him. One afternoon I stood at his bedside as he lay dying and said “I’m big and strong now and you’re small and weak.” I have a framed picture of him as a little boy to remind myself that he too was once a small child. I wasn’t there when he died but rushed home hoping they hadn’t taken away the body. They had him laid out over night and I put my hand on his dead forehead to make sure he was gone. I’ve been covering up his shit all my life.
My mum didn’t defend me, I can swallow all the reasons and excuses but the fact remains. I was portrayed as the difficult one. The abuse drove a wedge between my sister and I - she felt I was both dad’s favourite and mums. Great - dads little fuck buddy and mums secret. My sis knows now and now she feels guilty “where was I?” so it’s still a crock of shit. Just when I was coming to some sort of terms with my mum’s lack of defending me she did something similar to this: The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines In fact when this story hit the news years later I realized how totally betrayed I have been. I wasn’t around when the articles were published (living abroad), but my cousins all treated me with kid gloves when I visited. My mother had made up a bunch of fantasy stories about me being some big time drug fiend and portrayed herself as the hand wringing mother of an addict. One of my cousins IS a recovering addict and it was plain to them on meeting me again that these stories were made up, I’m just not that kind of person. I really don’t know how to feel about my mother.
They’re good people.
They spent time with us as kids. I fondly remember great metaphysical conversations I had with my dad when I was about 4 years old. Mum took a low payng job just so she could take school holidays off and take us to the beach or museum. We went camping as a family at least once (usually 3 or 4 times) each year. They took us everywhere, restaurants, parties, theatre shows. They thought that it was the best way for us to learn how to behave - and they expected good behaviour.
They taught us practical living skills and awful jokes. They explained things without judgement and lived that, our family friends included a rainbow of ethncity and gender orientation.
They were by no means perfect and I’ve been through the usual stages of forgiving them for being human and accepting that they did their honest best. But when I see some of the stories other Dopers have, my parents are saints.
I enjoy spending time with them and trust them implicitly with my daughter. While I don’t parent exactly the way they did, practically every example I’ve given in this post is how I try to raise my daughter.
My father’s sort of a run-of-the-mill asshole: a blowhard in love with the sound of his own voice, a temper he doesn’t bother to control, etc. Kind of a turd, and I have no respect for him at all though I do retain a small amount of affection.
My mother is a manipulative, psychotic bitch. The worst thing my father did was fail to protect me. The worst thing my mother did if I had to pick just one was freak out and go all hystericall suicidal on me while doing 85 in a highway construction zone with me in the passenger seat. She’s not thoroughly a horrible person - she’s a good friend to her friends - but she should never have been entrusted with a child.